The media, the political parties, the corporations, Hollywood, and academia looked down their nose at ordinary people who live here and basically anywhere more than 20 minutes outside of major metropolitan areas. These people, however, have their pride. They still hold dear the resourcefulness their parents and grandparents taught them to survive when economic lows creep into their hometowns. They know how to hunt for their meat and smoke it, raise chickens, keep a family budget, and work all day with their hands. They rarely expected a handout, let alone believed they were entitled to one or entitled to anything at all.
While many of those voters were a generation away from some of those traditions or crafts their parents practiced, it was still very much part of their cultural identity. Their coalition formed long before Trump descended that escalator in 2015. He was never the cause — they were already there, just waiting for the right person to speak up for them. He was the result.
They showed up and voted in the midterm elections in 2006 against the Republican establishment. Some of them voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because of his aspirational message, then voted Republican two years later because he did not live up to the ideals he had run on.
They were uninspired by Mitt Romney in 2012, so they sat back — Obama became the rare president who earned fewer votes in his reelection than he did in his first run. But they showed up in force in the 2014 midterm elections, and by 2016, they had settled on Trump as the only one who understood their potential. His message was about them, not him. And it worked.
By 2020, that message was all about him.
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